October 4, 2019 • 46 mins
How did the Stratos jump work? What sort of technology was inside the capsule? How did Felix's suit work? Join Jonathan and Chris as they leap into the tech behind this groundbreaking jump.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and a love
of all things tech. It's time for another classic episode.
This one's truly dated. This one came out on November seven,
(00:25):
two thousand twelve. It is titled tech Stuff Jumps from
Space and Yes, this was when we were talking about
a space jump when a capsule that was raised up
by very strong balloons, uh, was taken to the very
edge of space and we got to experience what it
(00:46):
was like to jump out of it as we watched
in first person view, and it was absolutely exhilarating or terrifying,
depending on your point of view. In this episode, Chris
and I talked about that entire mission and what it
took to achieve eve it. I hope you guys enjoy.
Earlier this week, as of the time we're recording this,
a fellow named Felix baumb Gardner did something pretty phenomenal. Yes,
(01:12):
actually he fell nice, He fell a lot. Yeah, he
fell more than any man has ever fallen before, right
in space. No one can hear you fall. As a
matter of fact, Uh, you know, you said that it's
been in the news. I think this is going to
captivate people's attention for a long long time because I
(01:35):
don't know that anybody is ready to better this brand
new And he said, and this record was set more
than you know, forty years after the last one, so
uh so, yeah, it's been a while. So what what
we're talking about is the Red Bull Stratos jump sponsored
(01:57):
by Red Bull. Was this crazy the attempt to break
some world records and many world records were broken, actually
three three, you know, the four that they were aiming
for they broke. If you're curious about the one they
did not break, it was for longest freefall. Uh And
I think they were going by longest as in uh time,
(02:19):
really they were looking at the time. It's kind of
interesting because according to what they were they were going
by the person who had the the record for the
highest jump previously, which was a uh that Air Force
United States Air Force colonel named Joseph Kittinger and his
name pronounced Kittinger. And on the news report that I, okay,
(02:42):
I don't know that Kittinger um at any rate he
in in. Uh. He did several jumps for the Air
Force to kind of test what this, how how could
a human survive in a high altitude jump? And one
on one of those jumps he fell for four minutes
(03:02):
and thirty six seconds before deploying his main shoot. However, Uh,
he did use a drogue shoot, which is a smaller
shoot not meant to uh, to slow you to the
safe speed, but rather to help guide your descent because
well we'll get into why that's important. But he had
that deployed in his jump. However, Uh, if you're really
(03:25):
going to be a stickler, then uh two years later.
That was in nineteen sixty two years later. So nineteen
sixty two, Eugene Andreev jumped from an altitude of around
eighty three thousand, five hundred twenty three feet, which is
around twenty five thousand, four hundred fifty seven meters uh
over Russia, and um he fell for eighty thousand, three
(03:50):
hundred eighty feet or four thousand, five hundred meters before
deploying his shoot without using a drugue shoot. So, depending
on the way you look, get his is the longest
free fault because there was no drug shoot deployed anyway,
uh baumb Gardner's fault did not last that long before
deploying his shoot. It was four minutes twenty two seconds
(04:11):
if I recall correctly, So he did not break that record. However,
other records he definitely did break. And it was a
remarkable achievement on multiple fronts. I mean, just human endurance
to be able to handle that kind of uh battering
about you get in a jump of that size, as
(04:34):
well as the technical uh achievements that we made in
order to make this possible. So we wanted to talk
a little bit about why this is such a challenging
thing to take on and the kind of stuff he
used to achieve it. And and of course this was
a huge effort. I mean, this is not one guy
(04:56):
going up in a plane and jumping out and deploy shoot.
I mean he there was There was a huge team
in place to bring this about. And of course, as
Jonathan has already mentioned, this is not an effort that
was backed by a government. This was completely private, um,
which you know, in some respects makes things easier. Um.
(05:19):
And yes, they didn't use any kind of spacecraft. They
did have a pressurized capsule that was lifted into place
by a very very tall balloon. Yeah. Actually the balloon
got less tall as it got as it gut further
up in the atmosphere because of the changes in pressure.
In fact, that's probably the first thing we should talk about,
(05:40):
is the air pressure and why uh, you know, why
there were so many things need to be in place
in order for him to have a successful jump. Um
air pressure changes at elevations, right, so uh, you know
it makes sense. You you figured when you think about
the Earth and you think about the atmosphere around the Earth, Well,
if you're on the surface of the Earth, you've got
(06:02):
more atmosphere above you pressing down on you than you
would if you were quite a bit of the ways up.
And so at sea level you have one atmosphere of pressure. Now,
if you're wondering, well, what does that mean in terms
of other units, that's that's just under fifteen pounds per
(06:24):
square inch or and you're welcome Europe that I did
this one point oh three kilograms per square centimeter. But
one atmosphere is a much easier way of saying that.
So that's at sea level, and that's the average. Okay,
So even even at sea level, that number of changes somewhat,
but the average is that number now at thirty five
(06:48):
thousand feet, which is, you know, around where a lot
of commercial air flights might be somewhere around in that area,
which is ten See I did this all the way around.
It's about three and a half pounds per square inch,
so remember it at C level fifteen pounds feet around
three and a half pounds. That, by the way, is
(07:09):
a point to five ms per square centimeter uh and
UH or point to four atmospheres. At around sixty two
thousand ft or nineteen thousand meters, the pressure has reached
a point where it's it's so um so much less
than what we experience that we can have some pretty
(07:34):
serious health risks. Um. You know, we're we've evolved on
this planet to to be able to survive in the
conditions of our environment. So you know, we're used to
having this certain amount of air pressure. Beyond that we
don't do so well. And if the pressure is too light,
(07:57):
then our our blood can actually start to have gas
form within it and then it'll will expand, which is
called ebulism. And it is not a good thing to
have happened to you. So that's why pressure is a
big deal. And of course we haven't even reached the
(08:18):
the height of the where the jump was because the
goal for this jump was to jump out at around
a hundred and twenty thousand feet uh. In actuality, he
got all the way up to around a d one
hundred feet, which is thirty nine thousand, forty five, which
is just over twenty four miles up or thirty nine
(08:41):
kilometers for those of you who wanted to, you know,
not divide that number of meters there. Um, it took
about two hours from to get there. But at that
at that elevation, air pressure is less than one pound
per square inch or less than point oh seven kilograms
per square centimeter or or point zero seven atmospheres, so
(09:04):
you're talking about very little air pressure at all. And
because of that, both the capsule he was in and
of course the suit he was wearing needed to be
pressurized so that he would not have any major health
risks when he when he jumped out or just from
(09:25):
the ascent. So the capsule was was pressurized first, and
it was done that way so that he would not
have to pressurize his suit from the from the ground
as they started to ascend um. By having it in
the capsule, it took some of that that that power,
(09:46):
that energy that was needed off the the actual suit,
which is good. You want to preserve that as much
as you can. Once they reached the float height, which
is where the balloon was not going to rise any
higher and not as high as it was going to go. Uh,
then that was when it was time to open up
the door and start off the jump. Well, that that's
(10:07):
where they had to depressurize the cabin and pressurize the suit.
Actually pressurize the suit first, obviously very important step, but
then depressurized the cabin so that they could open up
the door, because you can't open that door otherwise there's
too much pressure on the inside. It's just like if
you're in an airplane and you have the emergency exit,
the emergency exit, if you are at altitude, it's going
(10:29):
to have so much tremendous amount of pressure on the
inside because the airplane itself is pressurized while the outside
is not. You can't open that door. You're just not
physically strong enough. Same thing here. UM. Once it was
de pressurized, he could open up the door. His his
suit had been pressurized. UM, and that was what gave
him that safety of at least from the environment. I mean,
(10:50):
there's so many other things you have to worry about,
but as far as air pressure goes, that was how
they took care of that. And of course all the
different parts of his suit were sealed so that there
wouldn't be any leaks like the The gloves had uh
these these rotating locks on them so that you could
not have them airtight with the suit, as as well
(11:13):
as the helmet. UM. This was really important because I
Kittinger had a jump where he had a hole in
one of his gloves and um, apparently the the glove
ended up for the pressure, it ended up sticking to
his hand enough so that it wasn't a huge problem.
(11:36):
H And he did not report this to ground control
because of fear that they would cancel the jump. And
but by the time he landed there was a problem.
His hand started to swell and apparently swelled to about
twice the size of normal UH due to the UH
the changes in pressure and and and and so that's
(11:57):
something you don't want to have happen if you can
avoid it. That's true, that's true. Yeah. The the suit
was actually made by a company from Massachusetts. David Clark. Um,
they made suits for the Geminy missions as well as
Space Shuttle missions, Gemini missions. If that sounds like an
(12:21):
internal joke, it it sort of is. You gotta listen
to you. Previous Space podcast. We did a series on
the Gemini missions a few years ago. One of the
uh astronauts from that time kept pronouncing it Geminy, and
Jonathan's blood pressure just kept rising every time he said it.
Jimminy Cricket. Yeah, so yeah, it was the same company
(12:42):
that did that. They've they've made all kinds of suits
for aeronautics and space for decades now. So um, you
know they're they're well known, well respected firm to to
have done that. And obviously since the jump was successful
and no spoilers intended, but you know, well it's nice
(13:03):
to know. It's must say. You can't really spoil something
that already happened. Um, well know, if somebody's just now
hearing about this, yeah, well then you have been hiding
in a hole. You can you can watch actually watch
this live when it happened, and from about an hour
into it. I turned it on after he'd been on
for an hour because the ascent took just over two
(13:23):
hours to get to the right altitude. So UM, Jonathan
told me about how he felt when bum Gardner opened
the capsule door and started to step out, and they
call him fearless Felix, that's the nickname he is. Sheer
terror was what was going through me seeing his Yeah,
well we'll get into it. But but to go back
(13:45):
to the suit, it also could withstand temperatures as low
as minus ninety degrees fahrenheit or minus sixty eight celsius
or over one degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven point eight
degrees celsius. So also very important because of course at
that elevation you were also talking about very very cold temperatures.
(14:07):
Um and in fact, there were parts of his fall
that were colder than others. It was interesting because it
it actually warmed up a little bit from um, I
forget fresh No no, no, no, no, not friction. I'm
just talking about the ambient temperature actually warmed up, like
there was a point in the atmosphere. Yeah. No, I
(14:28):
was watching and they talked about it too. They said, well,
you know, closer to the sun. I'm like, really, you're
not that much closer The Sun's ninety three million miles away.
I think a few feet isn't a huge difference, but
but it was interesting. You could watch and the temperature
gauge was going up. It went really low and then
started creeping up again, just slightly, not like it wasn't
(14:49):
like skyrocketing, but at the height where he was jumping at,
the temperature was around minus ten fahrenheit, which is minus
twenty three celsius. So I blame house. Yeah, methane production.
Is that what you're talking about? Okay, I was trying
to see where you're going there. Note not based on
scientific fact, mostly because I just wanted to say cows.
(15:10):
So yeah, So the suit had to be able to
withstand these cold temperatures as well. And uh, his suit
also had very It looked a lot like the space
suits you would see, uh you know in any NASA
presentation or if you watch any of those launches. It
looks a lot like those. Actually, it also looked a
(15:31):
little bit um just from appearance's sake, uh, sort of
like the stuff that race car drivers wear, probably mostly
because the you know the names and the de cows
and things, right. Yeah, So it also had it also
had a sun visor that that Felix could put down
or up if he needed to. Uh, and the the
(15:53):
visor itself was heated in order to have it u
avoid icing issues. You know, obviously if you're if you're
going through super cold temperatures and you've you know, we
give off a lot of water vapor, as it turns out,
and could there could be a lot of icing problems,
both on the inside and outside of a suit. And uh.
In fact, that was one of the issues that almost
(16:17):
seemed to be a big problem during the the ascent,
because it looked like, according to Felix, that the face
plate was not heating properly. And uh, you know they
I think the first time I heard about that was
when he was around eighty thousand feet or so and
still rising, obviously still climbing. And and then you hear
(16:40):
the people on who are speaking during the whole ascent,
you know, the people who are relaying information to the audience, saying, everyone,
here's trying to find out what options we have, And
I'm like, wow, what options do you have? And the
the option, the biggest, like last ditch option thing, you know,
in order to get him back to Earth safely. You
(17:02):
you you ditch the jump. But the capsule itself was
connected to the balloon and hat and could disconnect and
had its own parachute. So the worst case scenario, uh,
action would be to cut the tie to the balloon,
to deploy the parachute on the capsule and have the
(17:25):
capsule come down to Earth. Now that was not ideal,
uh most well, first of all, you're aborting the jump,
so that's not ideal. But also it would have been
a bit of a rough landing. Now, the capsule itself
had a crash sections built into it, crash pads to
(17:45):
absorb some of that impact if it were to um
to have to land now. And and of course they
did detach the capsule at the end of the jump anyway,
because they wanted to retreat the capsule. But um uh,
you know, it's deaf. Would not have been a soft landing.
It would have been a little rough. And it's interesting
because the inside the capsule again looked very much like
(18:06):
the Gemini capsules. Um it was. It was a tiny
little thing. Really. The capsule was six ft tall or
one pot eight meters and it weighed pounds or one
thousands And yeah, I mean you take a look at
this and you're like, wow, this looks like it would fit,
(18:28):
you know, in a in a special casing on the
top of a rocket. It really did look like some
of those early NASA spacecraft. True enough, So should we
talk about the about the jump? Sure? Um, I mean
there's other there are other things actually before I want
to talk about the balloon. I want to talk about
(18:48):
the balloon because the balloon is crazy, so it has
its own story, actually five or so of them. Well,
the the weird thing I thought, the strangest thing to
me about the balloon was how incredibly thin that material was.
So uh it's it was made out of polyethylene plastic
(19:08):
film and it was point zero zero zero eight inches thick.
That's pretty thin. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty thin. Or point
zero zero zero two point zero zero zero two centimeters thick.
There we go, We're gonna get that number right, um,
(19:30):
but yeah, super super thin. They called it a forty
acre dry cleaner bag because it was essentially made of
very similar stuff. Now, if you're thinking like, how could
that possibly bear the weight of this capsule, which you
know weighs quite a bit, uh, the real the way
they did it was they used this load tape that
(19:53):
was connected to the balloon, and the load tape was
actually what bore the load of the capsule. The tape
also had in it a special reflective material so that
the balloon would show up on radar, very important for
any aircraft in the area, although of course the mission
was working along with air traffic controllers to make sure
(20:15):
there wouldn't be any problems on that because you know,
you can't really direct where a balloon is going to go.
You are you are at the mercy of the winds.
Although this was over the desert in the southwestern United States,
it was populated areas right near Roswell, New Mexico, so
it's really just the military and aliens that were there.
(20:36):
By the way, I'm totally joking. The whole Roswell alien
thing is absolutely ludicrous. But anyway, um so, yeah, and
that balloon was created by a t a aerospace and uh,
here's some here's some stats on the balloons, some some
for people who are curious about how big this was.
(20:56):
So uninflated it was one ft long or one point
six meters now at the height once it was inflated,
and which takes about an hour. Takes an hour to
inflate this balloon with helium. They used helium because it's
a nonflammable very important. If you've been wondering why there's
(21:18):
a helium shortage, Yeah yeah, talk about that's a big
balloon fill up with helium. Yeah yeah. The yell HC
might have a few things to say to Felix. Explain
to your kid why she can't get a door a balloon,
now you know? So, yeah, just getting the door balloon
filled with hydrogen. I can't imagine how anything bad happening
from that. Take it to a birthday party. Don't do that.
(21:41):
Hydrogen is highly flammable. That's why they went with helium
the candles. So the height of balloon once it was
fully inflated at takeoff was about five or one hundred
sixty seven point six meters, and once it reached its altitude,
the height was more like three hundred thirty four point
(22:01):
eight two ft or a hundred two point one because, again,
as it got higher up in the atmosphere, the atmospheric
pressure decreased, the balloon started to um. The height began
to decrease, but it's it's diameter increased. They began to
round out quite a bit because when you first looked
(22:21):
at it looked like a tear drop. It was kind
of tall and skinny, really compared compared to what we
think of when we do think of birthday party balloons,
you know, I mean those are tear drop shaped too,
but not this is a lot longer than that, right,
So once it got up to the mushroom here, yeah, yeah,
it definitely rounded out as it got higher up and uninflated.
(22:44):
It weighed a smelt three thousand seven eight pounds or
one thousands you just wanted to say smelled, I did.
And yeah, and it also had a vent so that
it could vent off helium. Now this is also really important.
You know what bugs me? It didn't It didn't vent anger,
(23:05):
it vented helium. Yeah. No. The the reason for the
vent is very important because the helium was expanding as
the balloon was climbing, right, So at there does come
a point where there's a possibility that that expansion could
damage the balloon itself and tear the balloon. So the
balloon needed to have a way of venting out excess
(23:27):
helium in order to avoid that. And in fact, they
did vent helium at least once or twice, especially once
they passed that hundred twenty thousand feet mark, because again
was their goal, and they went right by it and
kept on going. Um, so, you know, there was a
point where there was some concern about making sure that
(23:48):
the the balloon and capsule maintained integrity because it was
starting to go beyond what they had planned. So as
as long as they didn't run into any wire coat hangers,
because that's was to be the downfall of most dry
cleaner bags. Right, Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Jonathan from
two thousand nineteen here to interrupt this classic episode before
(24:11):
we take any more leaps, we're gonna take a quick
jump over to a break to thank our sponsor. They
had nine high definition cameras that were mounted on both
the suit and on an inside the capsule. So they
(24:33):
had cameras mounted on on these arms pointed back at
the capsule, so you could get these great views of
the capsule as it was going up, also as the
door opened, which that's the part where I was terrified,
and I'll talk about that in a second. But there
are also cameras on the suits they could capture footage
during the actual jump and plus beyond that they had
(24:54):
a helicopter that was using a camera mounted on a
stable as Asian gyroscope to track Felix's movements, and they
had ground cameras on these huge trucks with these uh,
these enormous basis that were motorized, so they could track
(25:16):
the progress of the balloon. And it it's phenomenal to
me because you think, that's a balloon that is more
or less twenty four miles up in the air. So
to have a camera that can capture something that's that
far away is pretty amazing. You know. You think about
that for a second, you're like, well, yeah, I've got
(25:38):
a digital zoom on my camera because at the one
point seven and well, this camera can capture something that's
twenty four miles away. Well, tracking the balloon was a
whole lot easier than tracking Felix after he stepped out
of the capsule. Right, he's much first of all, Uh, yeah,
he doesn't reflectively smaller, although not that much smaller. It's
(25:59):
the six ft tall capsule. He was moving a whole
lot fast. Yes, yes, because he was he was going downwards. Um,
and yeah, that was that was definitely. I mean, the
the footage that they captured was pretty phenomenal, and especially
when you sit there and think about the challenges involved
and and beyond that, not just capturing the footage, but
transmitting the footage, getting that live feed from the capsule,
(26:23):
You're thinking, wow, that's they had to dedicate a lot
of bandwidth, you know, in order to get that information
from the capsule to the ground and streaming out live.
And in fact, they had three dedicated video down links
with built in redundancy to get that information down to
the ground, and then they had a fiber optic network
on the ground to process that information. And they had
(26:47):
live switching so they could switch you know, different cameras
at different times to give the best angle or the
best camera experience at any given moment, which was pretty
you know, this was it was clearly something that the
whole media side of it was. There was a lot
of thought put toward it, which is sure you know
(27:08):
that that's so getting to the actual jump, once they
got to the point where uh, they had reached the
right altitude, uh, they had to go through a a
very long checklist to make sure that everything was prepared
before the jump, and that involved pressurizing the suit, disconnecting
(27:29):
the suits from the suit from the capsule because things,
the capsule had its own oxygen supply, because again at
that elevation, uh, the atmosphere is so thin that we
would not be able to breathe up there. So the
capsule it's own oxygen supply, and then the suit did
as well. So he had to detach the suit from
the capsule because clearly you can't jump if you're still
(27:52):
got all these hoses connected where you can, No, it
would not go well. So there was that there was
the whole deep pressurization, opening up the door, moving the
chair around quite a bit. The chair inside the capsule
could move forward and backward a little so that he
could reach various controls um and it was the point
(28:12):
where he had to move the chair back. He had
depressurized the capsule, pressurized the suit, the door had opened,
and then they used an exterior camera to capture the
moment where he moves. He's lifted his feet up so
they're above the threshold of the little capsule door, and
then he moves the chair forward, which means his feet
(28:33):
come out of the doorway and over nothing. And that's
where I freaked out. That point he was he had
to stand on a platform that was about the size
of an average skateboard. Yeah, and there he isn't a
space suit standing on a skateboard sized platform, holding onto
(28:54):
these rails that are on either side of the capsule door.
And uh, once he had to go ahead, he let
go and started falling. And I don't think I breathed
until until he stopped spinning. So here's one of the
issues about jumping at that height. So again, atmosphere is
(29:14):
really thin, right, you don't immediately start to slow down.
In fact, the atmosphere is so thin that you will
go faster than you would if you jumped from uh,
you know, any other height. Like you know, you don't
have anything pushing against you, or not not as much
pushing against because there is atmosphere out there, it's just
not as much it's in the stratosphere at this point. Yeah. Um.
(29:36):
And in case you're wondering, I happened to catch a
news report in which they had asked him, and Felix
said that he didn't look down, he was looking straight out,
which at that at that altitude, I'm not sure how
you could avoid it because the earth is you could
see the curvature of the Earth, and you're going, Okay,
that's that's something else that's kind of interesting is that curvature.
(30:00):
You can see it at that altitude. But uh, the
if you look at the footage from the jump, the
curvature is incredibly evident. Like you, it's just it's it's
it's obvious. The reason it's obvious is because the camera lens,
it's a wide angle camera lens, so it artificially has
bent the edges so it looks like the the curvature
(30:23):
is much more It looks how much further up than
he really was. Um. But in reality that you could
you from what I've been told, you can see the
curvature at that altitude. It's just not as dramatic as
what it appeared as on the live stream. So I
just wanted to point that out. But but at that altitude,
he he um. He moved very quickly into a very
(30:45):
fast speed thirty two ft per second per second or
nine point seven five four per second square that's the
acceleration of gravity. People, if you if you are, if
you are at all interested in physics, you will memorize
that and use it all the line. So he rapidly
increased to that speed. His his his top speed uh
(31:07):
is estimated because we at the time of the recording
of this podcast, we do not have the final information.
But his top speed was estimated at eight hundred thirty
three point nine miles per hour or one thousand, three
hundred forty two point eight kilometers per hour mock one
point to four. Yes, so mock being the speed of sound.
He had broken the sound barrier, the first human to
(31:31):
do so un unaided by any sort of vehicle. Yes,
And that's another interesting point than the interview with the
scientist that I had watched said that the speed of
sound is a little different at that altitude. To write sound,
sound travels, you know, the speed of sound is dependent
upon the medium through which it's traveling. Sound will travel
(31:54):
at a different rate of speed depending on if you
are in you know, it will travel at different race
speed from sea level two feet. Uh. It travels at
a different rate if it's through water or through a solid.
So um, yeah, it's one of the In fact, we
should might as well. This is a little bit of
a tangent, but lights the same way light travels at
(32:15):
you've heard of the speed of light being a constant
that's true, but that's talking about the speed of light
in a vacuum. The speed of light will change depending
on what it's traveling through. Now most of the time,
for us as human beings, that changes uh imperceptible to
us without incredibly sensitive measuring equipment. So to us, it's
(32:36):
you know, going at at the speed of light or
just a hair under the speed of light is effectively
the same thing for us. And I've tried to observe
that myself at my home, but I keep getting dust
in my eye every time I open that little bag
and it doesn't seem like there's any light in there
at all. But it may be the dust. I can't
tell right inside your vacuum now, so you should go
(32:56):
with the dice and that's the bag, clear. Ye. Chris
and I are going to freak out a little bit
more about jumping out of a capsule and space, but
before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
It's funny because when you get the idea of somebody
(33:18):
jumping out of an airplane, you're doing a traditional skydive.
Most of us have a pretty good idea of what
that quote unquote looks like. You you you stand in
the door. You jump out of the plane and you
instantly put out your arms and legs and you just
sort of glide until you feel like it's time to
open your shoot. Then you pull it and go. Well,
Felix wasn't as graceful, but it wasn't his fault. See
(33:40):
is it is? It turns out that whole atmosphere being
thinner thing kind of affects the way you fall at
that he couldn't use air resistance to help orient himself,
because that's one thing. Experienced sky divers can do all
sorts of really cool maneuvers while they're while they're diving,
and it's all due to the whole air resistance and
being able to use their bodies to angle in certain ways.
(34:02):
Either they can do a you know they can They
can try to resist or change their wind resistance, like
like reduce it to a point where they're falling very
very very fast, or they can try to increase their
wind resistance by increasing the surface area as much as possible.
They could do somersaults and other kinds of tricks, but
(34:22):
at that altitude there wasn't enough air, not enough atmosphere
to be able to do that. So there wasn't. There
wasn't that level of control, and so Felix did start spinning. Uh.
And if you watch the video, that also was terrifying
because you could see him spinning around and around. You're like, okay,
I sure hope he's able to maintain consciousness not black
(34:42):
out because uh, Kittinger said, you know, he blacked out
during his fall because of a similar issue, and that's
why the drug shoot was so important, was too. It
was actually I think it was not the hundred and
two thousand foot jump, but the previous one that can
Kilden did where he blacked out, And so that's why
the drove shoot was so important for him. Um in
(35:05):
his in his highest jump, well, yeah, you could see
that spinning happening. But then once once he did start
hitting the the next levels where the atmosphere is starting
to to increase in density, he was able to orient
himself into a traditional skydive position, the delta position. Yeah.
(35:28):
And and is that what's called That's interesting. I've never
gone skydiving, so I know very little about it. Although
an internet this is just between me and you. Do
not tell my wife because she would flip out. But
I am planning on doing a skydiving jump possibly during
c E S I am really yeah, me and uh
(35:53):
I as actar of this Weekend Tech, are thinking about
doing some skydiving during CS team. Uh, I don't want
to put into the into the show to the Las
Vegas Convention Center, doubtful. Um, it'll be much further out
into the desert. But don't tell my wife because she
would flip out. Okay, pinky swear, Yeah, okay. So anyway, Yeah,
(36:17):
he assumed that position and then that was the point
where I I said, oh good, Well, then he's clearly
he's clearly conscious and he's aware of what's going on
and he's able to respond. Um, he deployed his shoot
at the appropriate time and uh that was a big
that that got a big cheer from ground control. And
(36:40):
did you see did you watch any of the video
of his landing. It was a perfect landing. Absolutely, he
it was like it was like he just stepped off
a step. Like it wasn't like he just came from
one thousand feet. It was like he had just walked
down a set of stairs. Yeah, I would have looked
like a sack of potatoes from I would have been
(37:00):
has been dragged at least another few hundred meters, Like
he's an accomplished jumper. He's an accomplished base jumper, um,
which is you know, jumping off of ironically enough, it's
you know, lower altitudes, bridges and all sorts of other
different physical features just you know. So he's he's this
(37:21):
is well, you wouldn't try this at home anyway, but
I mean, this is not something from that that an
inexperienced person did. He's uh, clearly a well accomplished jumper.
And and he yeah, it was an absolutely perfect landing.
And then he got as soon as he came to
a stop, he went down on his knees and put
his hands up in the air like that was pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah,
(37:43):
yeah it was. I made the comment of if I
had done that, I would have made the decision. I
am never leaving the ground again from now on. People
bring stuff to me. I I did my part, Like
I'm not going back over the ocean. You bring that
continent right there. I want to go to London, bring
London here. It was an absolutely amazing, amazing feat and
(38:07):
it does have its uh, it does have a lot
of importance. You might not necessarily believe that you might
think of it as simply some sort of stunt. Yeah,
but going beyond that, I mean, there are first of all,
this this kind of is a proof of concept of
something that NASA was talking about in the sixties when
they were thinking about if there were a problem with
(38:29):
a spacecraft, would it be possible for astronauts to space
dive back to Earth? Would it would there be any
way they could do that? Um? Or is that just
a you know, outside the realm of our our abilities?
And they theorized that it would be possible, but they
were they were never able to test it. Kittinger's jumps
(38:50):
were kind of related to that, and a lot of
the data that they collected during this jump there was
stuff that they could put toward developing more safety features
for astronauts as well as space tourists, because whoever thought
that would become a thing. But well, um and there
(39:12):
I saw some some people talking about the space Shuttle program,
and of course the the the two famous disasters. UM.
One of the people that has been working on this
is um the husband of one of the people who
perished in the Columbia accident. Um. They were too high
to have done something like this, they were moving they
(39:33):
were too far out from the planet when the the
accident happened, and and they were moving way too fast,
something like Mark seventeen. I think I remember, um reading
it was a Dr Jonathan Clark, who was a former
NASA flight surgeon. His wife, Laurel Um died in that accident.
So uh, you know, he was he was involved in
(39:53):
the process of of going through the safety procedures here. Um.
He's dedicated his life to working on safe, better safety
in space. And um uh you know, as far as
the Challenger incident, well, it's it's sort of unclear, um
whether they would have been able to get out or not. Um.
Of course, some of the the procedures they developed for
(40:17):
the Space Shuttle were after that as a result of
that accident. So um. But you know, in the future
or depending on on the different kinds of missions that
are undertaken, you know, either by NASSA or another government
space agency or by private enterprise. You know, I think
that this information could prove useful, um, you know, in
an emergency, or you know, perhaps it is a form
(40:40):
of space tourism. I don't know, well, And and and
just learning learning what the effects are these the things
that that that Felix experienced during this whole jump, I
mean everything from most breaking the sound barrier that no
one was really sure what would happen to a person,
and if to be fair, as of the recording of
(41:03):
this podcast, we cannot be certain that he did break
that barrier because the final numbers haven't come in. He
had a did you see how he would know if
he broke the sound barrier his so so he has
a chess plate or he had a chess plate on
his on a suit that contained a lot of different sensors, telemetry,
you know, information, GPS, all this kind of stuff. If
(41:27):
the sensors detected that the suit had exceeded the speed
of sound, it would send a ringtone to his helmet.
But he said he was concentrating so hard on what
was going on that he totally did not He didn't
notice anything. So it may have gone off or it
(41:47):
may not have gone off, and he would he doesn't
know because he was you know, at that point, I'm
kind of just really paying a trinch to what's going on,
especially once you know he came out of that spin.
So I'm flying here, Yeah, I got a lady I'm
flying here. Yeah, but yeah, there are there are a
lot of There are a lot of things that this
(42:08):
could help with, including designing new types of space suits
that are effective and are not as you know, we
can always make advances in that that realm. We don't
want it to be so clunky that you can't maneuver
around within the confines of a space vehicle. But it
still has to have the adequate levels of protection necessary
(42:31):
to make to maintain the health and safety of our astronauts.
So that's an important thing to to keep in mind too. Granted,
I don't think I don't think most of our space
suits will necessarily have a sponsor logos on them, but
they will. Um. I was disappointed that the the the
(42:52):
space suit didn't have wings. Well, it was interesting too
to uh to compare and you know, I'm going in
my head here looking at the the suits that they
wore in uh NASA launches from the nineteen sixties and seventies,
more so much bulkier um than this. Well, I mean
they were they were intended for different purposes, but I
(43:14):
imagine the equipment in this newer suit was far more
advanced than what kitten Ger wore. On his jumps and uh,
you know that with the technology advances, Uh, you know,
it's funny in a way, they resemble more what Hollywood
um suggests for you know, space fighter pilots than from
what the astronauts, the the actual astronauts from from our
(43:38):
own planet um or back in the days when that
was so common. I look forward to to the day
when we have space suits for space jumps that are
like the ones in the documentary Star Trek, not the
not the original motion picture Star Trek, but the the J. J.
Abrams documentary Star Trek. Yeah, the J. J Abrams documentary
(43:59):
Star Trek colon the lens flare caught me off. So, yeah,
do you have anything else you want to talk about? This?
This jump in particular, it was a really neat thing
to watch live and and Twitter was going bonkers as
this was happening. I saw so many people I know
(44:20):
tweeting about this, and um uh it just seemed like
there was an overall sense of excitement and and not
I was not the only terrified person on Earth watching this.
Um And you can watch the entire presentation as well.
It's it's up online so you can go and watch,
(44:40):
or you can watch segments of it if you don't have,
you know, two and a half hours to burn. But uh,
it's it's definitely something something amazing. It's one of those
moments in human achievement where you think, wow, it never
would have occurred to me that this is something that
anyone would want to do, and if they wanted to
do it, I can't eagine it being possible. And yet
(45:01):
both of those things happened. Yep, it was. It was
an amazing event. And uh, I'm glad it ended so well. Yes,
steps you're perfect, Yep, yep, it was so many different
things could have gone wrong. I'm glad of a lot
of really smart people worked on this to make sure
it went off without without any major glitches. So my
hat is off to you, and there we have our
(45:23):
classic tech stuff episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. It
was interesting to go back and look at this moment
in history, which I think a lot of people kind
of forget about now. Things changed so fast. We have
so many things dominating the news cycle that sometimes it
can be hard to remember these sort of pivotal, exciting
moments where the world was watching as someone did something
(45:46):
truly extraordinary, so it's fun to go back and look
at this. If you have suggestions for future episodes of
tech Stuff, you can reach out to me with the
email tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, where
you can pop on over to our website that's tech
Stuff podcast ask dot com that has an archive of
all of our past episodes. You can find links to
where we are on social media, and you can also
(46:06):
find a link to our online store, where every purchase
you make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,
and I will talk to you again really soon. Ye
hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(46:28):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
How Stuff Works and I Heeart Radio and a love
of all things tech. It's time for another classic episode.
This one's truly dated. This one came out on November seven,
(00:25):
two thousand twelve. It is titled tech Stuff Jumps from
Space and Yes, this was when we were talking about
a space jump when a capsule that was raised up
by very strong balloons, uh, was taken to the very
edge of space and we got to experience what it
(00:46):
was like to jump out of it as we watched
in first person view, and it was absolutely exhilarating or terrifying,
depending on your point of view. In this episode, Chris
and I talked about that entire mission and what it
took to achieve eve it. I hope you guys enjoy.
Earlier this week, as of the time we're recording this,
a fellow named Felix baumb Gardner did something pretty phenomenal. Yes,
(01:12):
actually he fell nice, He fell a lot. Yeah, he
fell more than any man has ever fallen before, right
in space. No one can hear you fall. As a
matter of fact, Uh, you know, you said that it's
been in the news. I think this is going to
captivate people's attention for a long long time because I
(01:35):
don't know that anybody is ready to better this brand
new And he said, and this record was set more
than you know, forty years after the last one, so
uh so, yeah, it's been a while. So what what
we're talking about is the Red Bull Stratos jump sponsored
(01:57):
by Red Bull. Was this crazy the attempt to break
some world records and many world records were broken, actually
three three, you know, the four that they were aiming
for they broke. If you're curious about the one they
did not break, it was for longest freefall. Uh And
I think they were going by longest as in uh time,
(02:19):
really they were looking at the time. It's kind of
interesting because according to what they were they were going
by the person who had the the record for the
highest jump previously, which was a uh that Air Force
United States Air Force colonel named Joseph Kittinger and his
name pronounced Kittinger. And on the news report that I, okay,
(02:42):
I don't know that Kittinger um at any rate he
in in. Uh. He did several jumps for the Air
Force to kind of test what this, how how could
a human survive in a high altitude jump? And one
on one of those jumps he fell for four minutes
(03:02):
and thirty six seconds before deploying his main shoot. However, Uh,
he did use a drogue shoot, which is a smaller
shoot not meant to uh, to slow you to the
safe speed, but rather to help guide your descent because
well we'll get into why that's important. But he had
that deployed in his jump. However, Uh, if you're really
(03:25):
going to be a stickler, then uh two years later.
That was in nineteen sixty two years later. So nineteen
sixty two, Eugene Andreev jumped from an altitude of around
eighty three thousand, five hundred twenty three feet, which is
around twenty five thousand, four hundred fifty seven meters uh
over Russia, and um he fell for eighty thousand, three
(03:50):
hundred eighty feet or four thousand, five hundred meters before
deploying his shoot without using a drugue shoot. So, depending
on the way you look, get his is the longest
free fault because there was no drug shoot deployed anyway,
uh baumb Gardner's fault did not last that long before
deploying his shoot. It was four minutes twenty two seconds
(04:11):
if I recall correctly, So he did not break that record. However,
other records he definitely did break. And it was a
remarkable achievement on multiple fronts. I mean, just human endurance
to be able to handle that kind of uh battering
about you get in a jump of that size, as
(04:34):
well as the technical uh achievements that we made in
order to make this possible. So we wanted to talk
a little bit about why this is such a challenging
thing to take on and the kind of stuff he
used to achieve it. And and of course this was
a huge effort. I mean, this is not one guy
(04:56):
going up in a plane and jumping out and deploy shoot.
I mean he there was There was a huge team
in place to bring this about. And of course, as
Jonathan has already mentioned, this is not an effort that
was backed by a government. This was completely private, um,
which you know, in some respects makes things easier. Um.
(05:19):
And yes, they didn't use any kind of spacecraft. They
did have a pressurized capsule that was lifted into place
by a very very tall balloon. Yeah. Actually the balloon
got less tall as it got as it gut further
up in the atmosphere because of the changes in pressure.
In fact, that's probably the first thing we should talk about,
(05:40):
is the air pressure and why uh, you know, why
there were so many things need to be in place
in order for him to have a successful jump. Um
air pressure changes at elevations, right, so uh, you know
it makes sense. You you figured when you think about
the Earth and you think about the atmosphere around the Earth, Well,
if you're on the surface of the Earth, you've got
(06:02):
more atmosphere above you pressing down on you than you
would if you were quite a bit of the ways up.
And so at sea level you have one atmosphere of pressure. Now,
if you're wondering, well, what does that mean in terms
of other units, that's that's just under fifteen pounds per
(06:24):
square inch or and you're welcome Europe that I did
this one point oh three kilograms per square centimeter. But
one atmosphere is a much easier way of saying that.
So that's at sea level, and that's the average. Okay,
So even even at sea level, that number of changes somewhat,
but the average is that number now at thirty five
(06:48):
thousand feet, which is, you know, around where a lot
of commercial air flights might be somewhere around in that area,
which is ten See I did this all the way around.
It's about three and a half pounds per square inch,
so remember it at C level fifteen pounds feet around
three and a half pounds. That, by the way, is
(07:09):
a point to five ms per square centimeter uh and
UH or point to four atmospheres. At around sixty two
thousand ft or nineteen thousand meters, the pressure has reached
a point where it's it's so um so much less
than what we experience that we can have some pretty
(07:34):
serious health risks. Um. You know, we're we've evolved on
this planet to to be able to survive in the
conditions of our environment. So you know, we're used to
having this certain amount of air pressure. Beyond that we
don't do so well. And if the pressure is too light,
(07:57):
then our our blood can actually start to have gas
form within it and then it'll will expand, which is
called ebulism. And it is not a good thing to
have happened to you. So that's why pressure is a
big deal. And of course we haven't even reached the
(08:18):
the height of the where the jump was because the
goal for this jump was to jump out at around
a hundred and twenty thousand feet uh. In actuality, he
got all the way up to around a d one
hundred feet, which is thirty nine thousand, forty five, which
is just over twenty four miles up or thirty nine
(08:41):
kilometers for those of you who wanted to, you know,
not divide that number of meters there. Um, it took
about two hours from to get there. But at that
at that elevation, air pressure is less than one pound
per square inch or less than point oh seven kilograms
per square centimeter or or point zero seven atmospheres, so
(09:04):
you're talking about very little air pressure at all. And
because of that, both the capsule he was in and
of course the suit he was wearing needed to be
pressurized so that he would not have any major health
risks when he when he jumped out or just from
(09:25):
the ascent. So the capsule was was pressurized first, and
it was done that way so that he would not
have to pressurize his suit from the from the ground
as they started to ascend um. By having it in
the capsule, it took some of that that that power,
(09:46):
that energy that was needed off the the actual suit,
which is good. You want to preserve that as much
as you can. Once they reached the float height, which
is where the balloon was not going to rise any
higher and not as high as it was going to go. Uh,
then that was when it was time to open up
the door and start off the jump. Well, that that's
(10:07):
where they had to depressurize the cabin and pressurize the suit.
Actually pressurize the suit first, obviously very important step, but
then depressurized the cabin so that they could open up
the door, because you can't open that door otherwise there's
too much pressure on the inside. It's just like if
you're in an airplane and you have the emergency exit,
the emergency exit, if you are at altitude, it's going
(10:29):
to have so much tremendous amount of pressure on the
inside because the airplane itself is pressurized while the outside
is not. You can't open that door. You're just not
physically strong enough. Same thing here. UM. Once it was
de pressurized, he could open up the door. His his
suit had been pressurized. UM, and that was what gave
him that safety of at least from the environment. I mean,
(10:50):
there's so many other things you have to worry about,
but as far as air pressure goes, that was how
they took care of that. And of course all the
different parts of his suit were sealed so that there
wouldn't be any leaks like the The gloves had uh
these these rotating locks on them so that you could
not have them airtight with the suit, as as well
(11:13):
as the helmet. UM. This was really important because I
Kittinger had a jump where he had a hole in
one of his gloves and um, apparently the the glove
ended up for the pressure, it ended up sticking to
his hand enough so that it wasn't a huge problem.
(11:36):
H And he did not report this to ground control
because of fear that they would cancel the jump. And
but by the time he landed there was a problem.
His hand started to swell and apparently swelled to about
twice the size of normal UH due to the UH
the changes in pressure and and and and so that's
(11:57):
something you don't want to have happen if you can
avoid it. That's true, that's true. Yeah. The the suit
was actually made by a company from Massachusetts. David Clark. Um,
they made suits for the Geminy missions as well as
Space Shuttle missions, Gemini missions. If that sounds like an
(12:21):
internal joke, it it sort of is. You gotta listen
to you. Previous Space podcast. We did a series on
the Gemini missions a few years ago. One of the
uh astronauts from that time kept pronouncing it Geminy, and
Jonathan's blood pressure just kept rising every time he said it.
Jimminy Cricket. Yeah, so yeah, it was the same company
(12:42):
that did that. They've they've made all kinds of suits
for aeronautics and space for decades now. So um, you
know they're they're well known, well respected firm to to
have done that. And obviously since the jump was successful
and no spoilers intended, but you know, well it's nice
(13:03):
to know. It's must say. You can't really spoil something
that already happened. Um, well know, if somebody's just now
hearing about this, yeah, well then you have been hiding
in a hole. You can you can watch actually watch
this live when it happened, and from about an hour
into it. I turned it on after he'd been on
for an hour because the ascent took just over two
(13:23):
hours to get to the right altitude. So UM, Jonathan
told me about how he felt when bum Gardner opened
the capsule door and started to step out, and they
call him fearless Felix, that's the nickname he is. Sheer
terror was what was going through me seeing his Yeah,
well we'll get into it. But but to go back
(13:45):
to the suit, it also could withstand temperatures as low
as minus ninety degrees fahrenheit or minus sixty eight celsius
or over one degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven point eight
degrees celsius. So also very important because of course at
that elevation you were also talking about very very cold temperatures.
(14:07):
Um and in fact, there were parts of his fall
that were colder than others. It was interesting because it
it actually warmed up a little bit from um, I
forget fresh No no, no, no, no, not friction. I'm
just talking about the ambient temperature actually warmed up, like
there was a point in the atmosphere. Yeah. No, I
(14:28):
was watching and they talked about it too. They said, well,
you know, closer to the sun. I'm like, really, you're
not that much closer The Sun's ninety three million miles away.
I think a few feet isn't a huge difference, but
but it was interesting. You could watch and the temperature
gauge was going up. It went really low and then
started creeping up again, just slightly, not like it wasn't
(14:49):
like skyrocketing, but at the height where he was jumping at,
the temperature was around minus ten fahrenheit, which is minus
twenty three celsius. So I blame house. Yeah, methane production.
Is that what you're talking about? Okay, I was trying
to see where you're going there. Note not based on
scientific fact, mostly because I just wanted to say cows.
(15:10):
So yeah, So the suit had to be able to
withstand these cold temperatures as well. And uh, his suit
also had very It looked a lot like the space
suits you would see, uh you know in any NASA
presentation or if you watch any of those launches. It
looks a lot like those. Actually, it also looked a
(15:31):
little bit um just from appearance's sake, uh, sort of
like the stuff that race car drivers wear, probably mostly
because the you know the names and the de cows
and things, right. Yeah, So it also had it also
had a sun visor that that Felix could put down
or up if he needed to. Uh, and the the
(15:53):
visor itself was heated in order to have it u
avoid icing issues. You know, obviously if you're if you're
going through super cold temperatures and you've you know, we
give off a lot of water vapor, as it turns out,
and could there could be a lot of icing problems,
both on the inside and outside of a suit. And uh.
In fact, that was one of the issues that almost
(16:17):
seemed to be a big problem during the the ascent,
because it looked like, according to Felix, that the face
plate was not heating properly. And uh, you know they
I think the first time I heard about that was
when he was around eighty thousand feet or so and
still rising, obviously still climbing. And and then you hear
(16:40):
the people on who are speaking during the whole ascent,
you know, the people who are relaying information to the audience, saying, everyone,
here's trying to find out what options we have, And
I'm like, wow, what options do you have? And the
the option, the biggest, like last ditch option thing, you know,
in order to get him back to Earth safely. You
(17:02):
you you ditch the jump. But the capsule itself was
connected to the balloon and hat and could disconnect and
had its own parachute. So the worst case scenario, uh,
action would be to cut the tie to the balloon,
to deploy the parachute on the capsule and have the
(17:25):
capsule come down to Earth. Now that was not ideal,
uh most well, first of all, you're aborting the jump,
so that's not ideal. But also it would have been
a bit of a rough landing. Now, the capsule itself
had a crash sections built into it, crash pads to
(17:45):
absorb some of that impact if it were to um
to have to land now. And and of course they
did detach the capsule at the end of the jump anyway,
because they wanted to retreat the capsule. But um uh,
you know, it's deaf. Would not have been a soft landing.
It would have been a little rough. And it's interesting
because the inside the capsule again looked very much like
(18:06):
the Gemini capsules. Um it was. It was a tiny
little thing. Really. The capsule was six ft tall or
one pot eight meters and it weighed pounds or one
thousands And yeah, I mean you take a look at
this and you're like, wow, this looks like it would fit,
(18:28):
you know, in a in a special casing on the
top of a rocket. It really did look like some
of those early NASA spacecraft. True enough, So should we
talk about the about the jump? Sure? Um, I mean
there's other there are other things actually before I want
to talk about the balloon. I want to talk about
(18:48):
the balloon because the balloon is crazy, so it has
its own story, actually five or so of them. Well,
the the weird thing I thought, the strangest thing to
me about the balloon was how incredibly thin that material was.
So uh it's it was made out of polyethylene plastic
(19:08):
film and it was point zero zero zero eight inches thick.
That's pretty thin. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty thin. Or point
zero zero zero two point zero zero zero two centimeters thick.
There we go, We're gonna get that number right, um,
(19:30):
but yeah, super super thin. They called it a forty
acre dry cleaner bag because it was essentially made of
very similar stuff. Now, if you're thinking like, how could
that possibly bear the weight of this capsule, which you
know weighs quite a bit, uh, the real the way
they did it was they used this load tape that
(19:53):
was connected to the balloon, and the load tape was
actually what bore the load of the capsule. The tape
also had in it a special reflective material so that
the balloon would show up on radar, very important for
any aircraft in the area, although of course the mission
was working along with air traffic controllers to make sure
(20:15):
there wouldn't be any problems on that because you know,
you can't really direct where a balloon is going to go.
You are you are at the mercy of the winds.
Although this was over the desert in the southwestern United States,
it was populated areas right near Roswell, New Mexico, so
it's really just the military and aliens that were there.
(20:36):
By the way, I'm totally joking. The whole Roswell alien
thing is absolutely ludicrous. But anyway, um so, yeah, and
that balloon was created by a t a aerospace and uh,
here's some here's some stats on the balloons, some some
for people who are curious about how big this was.
(20:56):
So uninflated it was one ft long or one point
six meters now at the height once it was inflated,
and which takes about an hour. Takes an hour to
inflate this balloon with helium. They used helium because it's
a nonflammable very important. If you've been wondering why there's
(21:18):
a helium shortage, Yeah yeah, talk about that's a big
balloon fill up with helium. Yeah yeah. The yell HC
might have a few things to say to Felix. Explain
to your kid why she can't get a door a balloon,
now you know? So, yeah, just getting the door balloon
filled with hydrogen. I can't imagine how anything bad happening
from that. Take it to a birthday party. Don't do that.
(21:41):
Hydrogen is highly flammable. That's why they went with helium
the candles. So the height of balloon once it was
fully inflated at takeoff was about five or one hundred
sixty seven point six meters, and once it reached its altitude,
the height was more like three hundred thirty four point
(22:01):
eight two ft or a hundred two point one because, again,
as it got higher up in the atmosphere, the atmospheric
pressure decreased, the balloon started to um. The height began
to decrease, but it's it's diameter increased. They began to
round out quite a bit because when you first looked
(22:21):
at it looked like a tear drop. It was kind
of tall and skinny, really compared compared to what we
think of when we do think of birthday party balloons,
you know, I mean those are tear drop shaped too,
but not this is a lot longer than that, right,
So once it got up to the mushroom here, yeah, yeah,
it definitely rounded out as it got higher up and uninflated.
(22:44):
It weighed a smelt three thousand seven eight pounds or
one thousands you just wanted to say smelled, I did.
And yeah, and it also had a vent so that
it could vent off helium. Now this is also really important.
You know what bugs me? It didn't It didn't vent anger,
(23:05):
it vented helium. Yeah. No. The the reason for the
vent is very important because the helium was expanding as
the balloon was climbing, right, So at there does come
a point where there's a possibility that that expansion could
damage the balloon itself and tear the balloon. So the
balloon needed to have a way of venting out excess
(23:27):
helium in order to avoid that. And in fact, they
did vent helium at least once or twice, especially once
they passed that hundred twenty thousand feet mark, because again
was their goal, and they went right by it and
kept on going. Um, so, you know, there was a
point where there was some concern about making sure that
(23:48):
the the balloon and capsule maintained integrity because it was
starting to go beyond what they had planned. So as
as long as they didn't run into any wire coat hangers,
because that's was to be the downfall of most dry
cleaner bags. Right, Yeah, that's exactly the problem. Jonathan from
two thousand nineteen here to interrupt this classic episode before
(24:11):
we take any more leaps, we're gonna take a quick
jump over to a break to thank our sponsor. They
had nine high definition cameras that were mounted on both
the suit and on an inside the capsule. So they
(24:33):
had cameras mounted on on these arms pointed back at
the capsule, so you could get these great views of
the capsule as it was going up, also as the
door opened, which that's the part where I was terrified,
and I'll talk about that in a second. But there
are also cameras on the suits they could capture footage
during the actual jump and plus beyond that they had
(24:54):
a helicopter that was using a camera mounted on a
stable as Asian gyroscope to track Felix's movements, and they
had ground cameras on these huge trucks with these uh,
these enormous basis that were motorized, so they could track
(25:16):
the progress of the balloon. And it it's phenomenal to
me because you think, that's a balloon that is more
or less twenty four miles up in the air. So
to have a camera that can capture something that's that
far away is pretty amazing. You know. You think about
that for a second, you're like, well, yeah, I've got
(25:38):
a digital zoom on my camera because at the one
point seven and well, this camera can capture something that's
twenty four miles away. Well, tracking the balloon was a
whole lot easier than tracking Felix after he stepped out
of the capsule. Right, he's much first of all, Uh, yeah,
he doesn't reflectively smaller, although not that much smaller. It's
(25:59):
the six ft tall capsule. He was moving a whole
lot fast. Yes, yes, because he was he was going downwards. Um,
and yeah, that was that was definitely. I mean, the
the footage that they captured was pretty phenomenal, and especially
when you sit there and think about the challenges involved
and and beyond that, not just capturing the footage, but
transmitting the footage, getting that live feed from the capsule,
(26:23):
You're thinking, wow, that's they had to dedicate a lot
of bandwidth, you know, in order to get that information
from the capsule to the ground and streaming out live.
And in fact, they had three dedicated video down links
with built in redundancy to get that information down to
the ground, and then they had a fiber optic network
on the ground to process that information. And they had
(26:47):
live switching so they could switch you know, different cameras
at different times to give the best angle or the
best camera experience at any given moment, which was pretty
you know, this was it was clearly something that the
whole media side of it was. There was a lot
of thought put toward it, which is sure you know
(27:08):
that that's so getting to the actual jump, once they
got to the point where uh, they had reached the
right altitude, uh, they had to go through a a
very long checklist to make sure that everything was prepared
before the jump, and that involved pressurizing the suit, disconnecting
(27:29):
the suits from the suit from the capsule because things,
the capsule had its own oxygen supply, because again at
that elevation, uh, the atmosphere is so thin that we
would not be able to breathe up there. So the
capsule it's own oxygen supply, and then the suit did
as well. So he had to detach the suit from
the capsule because clearly you can't jump if you're still
(27:52):
got all these hoses connected where you can, No, it
would not go well. So there was that there was
the whole deep pressurization, opening up the door, moving the
chair around quite a bit. The chair inside the capsule
could move forward and backward a little so that he
could reach various controls um and it was the point
(28:12):
where he had to move the chair back. He had
depressurized the capsule, pressurized the suit, the door had opened,
and then they used an exterior camera to capture the
moment where he moves. He's lifted his feet up so
they're above the threshold of the little capsule door, and
then he moves the chair forward, which means his feet
(28:33):
come out of the doorway and over nothing. And that's
where I freaked out. That point he was he had
to stand on a platform that was about the size
of an average skateboard. Yeah, and there he isn't a
space suit standing on a skateboard sized platform, holding onto
(28:54):
these rails that are on either side of the capsule door.
And uh, once he had to go ahead, he let
go and started falling. And I don't think I breathed
until until he stopped spinning. So here's one of the
issues about jumping at that height. So again, atmosphere is
(29:14):
really thin, right, you don't immediately start to slow down.
In fact, the atmosphere is so thin that you will
go faster than you would if you jumped from uh,
you know, any other height. Like you know, you don't
have anything pushing against you, or not not as much
pushing against because there is atmosphere out there, it's just
not as much it's in the stratosphere at this point. Yeah. Um.
(29:36):
And in case you're wondering, I happened to catch a
news report in which they had asked him, and Felix
said that he didn't look down, he was looking straight out,
which at that at that altitude, I'm not sure how
you could avoid it because the earth is you could
see the curvature of the Earth, and you're going, Okay,
that's that's something else that's kind of interesting is that curvature.
(30:00):
You can see it at that altitude. But uh, the
if you look at the footage from the jump, the
curvature is incredibly evident. Like you, it's just it's it's
it's obvious. The reason it's obvious is because the camera lens,
it's a wide angle camera lens, so it artificially has
bent the edges so it looks like the the curvature
(30:23):
is much more It looks how much further up than
he really was. Um. But in reality that you could
you from what I've been told, you can see the
curvature at that altitude. It's just not as dramatic as
what it appeared as on the live stream. So I
just wanted to point that out. But but at that altitude,
he he um. He moved very quickly into a very
(30:45):
fast speed thirty two ft per second per second or
nine point seven five four per second square that's the
acceleration of gravity. People, if you if you are, if
you are at all interested in physics, you will memorize
that and use it all the line. So he rapidly
increased to that speed. His his his top speed uh
(31:07):
is estimated because we at the time of the recording
of this podcast, we do not have the final information.
But his top speed was estimated at eight hundred thirty
three point nine miles per hour or one thousand, three
hundred forty two point eight kilometers per hour mock one
point to four. Yes, so mock being the speed of sound.
He had broken the sound barrier, the first human to
(31:31):
do so un unaided by any sort of vehicle. Yes,
And that's another interesting point than the interview with the
scientist that I had watched said that the speed of
sound is a little different at that altitude. To write sound,
sound travels, you know, the speed of sound is dependent
upon the medium through which it's traveling. Sound will travel
(31:54):
at a different rate of speed depending on if you
are in you know, it will travel at different race
speed from sea level two feet. Uh. It travels at
a different rate if it's through water or through a solid.
So um, yeah, it's one of the In fact, we
should might as well. This is a little bit of
a tangent, but lights the same way light travels at
(32:15):
you've heard of the speed of light being a constant
that's true, but that's talking about the speed of light
in a vacuum. The speed of light will change depending
on what it's traveling through. Now most of the time,
for us as human beings, that changes uh imperceptible to
us without incredibly sensitive measuring equipment. So to us, it's
(32:36):
you know, going at at the speed of light or
just a hair under the speed of light is effectively
the same thing for us. And I've tried to observe
that myself at my home, but I keep getting dust
in my eye every time I open that little bag
and it doesn't seem like there's any light in there
at all. But it may be the dust. I can't
tell right inside your vacuum now, so you should go
(32:56):
with the dice and that's the bag, clear. Ye. Chris
and I are going to freak out a little bit
more about jumping out of a capsule and space, but
before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
It's funny because when you get the idea of somebody
(33:18):
jumping out of an airplane, you're doing a traditional skydive.
Most of us have a pretty good idea of what
that quote unquote looks like. You you you stand in
the door. You jump out of the plane and you
instantly put out your arms and legs and you just
sort of glide until you feel like it's time to
open your shoot. Then you pull it and go. Well,
Felix wasn't as graceful, but it wasn't his fault. See
(33:40):
is it is? It turns out that whole atmosphere being
thinner thing kind of affects the way you fall at
that he couldn't use air resistance to help orient himself,
because that's one thing. Experienced sky divers can do all
sorts of really cool maneuvers while they're while they're diving,
and it's all due to the whole air resistance and
being able to use their bodies to angle in certain ways.
(34:02):
Either they can do a you know they can They
can try to resist or change their wind resistance, like
like reduce it to a point where they're falling very
very very fast, or they can try to increase their
wind resistance by increasing the surface area as much as possible.
They could do somersaults and other kinds of tricks, but
(34:22):
at that altitude there wasn't enough air, not enough atmosphere
to be able to do that. So there wasn't. There
wasn't that level of control, and so Felix did start spinning. Uh.
And if you watch the video, that also was terrifying
because you could see him spinning around and around. You're like, okay,
I sure hope he's able to maintain consciousness not black
(34:42):
out because uh, Kittinger said, you know, he blacked out
during his fall because of a similar issue, and that's
why the drug shoot was so important, was too. It
was actually I think it was not the hundred and
two thousand foot jump, but the previous one that can
Kilden did where he blacked out, And so that's why
the drove shoot was so important for him. Um in
(35:05):
his in his highest jump, well, yeah, you could see
that spinning happening. But then once once he did start
hitting the the next levels where the atmosphere is starting
to to increase in density, he was able to orient
himself into a traditional skydive position, the delta position. Yeah.
(35:28):
And and is that what's called That's interesting. I've never
gone skydiving, so I know very little about it. Although
an internet this is just between me and you. Do
not tell my wife because she would flip out. But
I am planning on doing a skydiving jump possibly during
c E S I am really yeah, me and uh
(35:53):
I as actar of this Weekend Tech, are thinking about
doing some skydiving during CS team. Uh, I don't want
to put into the into the show to the Las
Vegas Convention Center, doubtful. Um, it'll be much further out
into the desert. But don't tell my wife because she
would flip out. Okay, pinky swear, Yeah, okay. So anyway, Yeah,
(36:17):
he assumed that position and then that was the point
where I I said, oh good, Well, then he's clearly
he's clearly conscious and he's aware of what's going on
and he's able to respond. Um, he deployed his shoot
at the appropriate time and uh that was a big
that that got a big cheer from ground control. And
(36:40):
did you see did you watch any of the video
of his landing. It was a perfect landing. Absolutely, he
it was like it was like he just stepped off
a step. Like it wasn't like he just came from
one thousand feet. It was like he had just walked
down a set of stairs. Yeah, I would have looked
like a sack of potatoes from I would have been
(37:00):
has been dragged at least another few hundred meters, Like
he's an accomplished jumper. He's an accomplished base jumper, um,
which is you know, jumping off of ironically enough, it's
you know, lower altitudes, bridges and all sorts of other
different physical features just you know. So he's he's this
(37:21):
is well, you wouldn't try this at home anyway, but
I mean, this is not something from that that an
inexperienced person did. He's uh, clearly a well accomplished jumper.
And and he yeah, it was an absolutely perfect landing.
And then he got as soon as he came to
a stop, he went down on his knees and put
his hands up in the air like that was pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah,
(37:43):
yeah it was. I made the comment of if I
had done that, I would have made the decision. I
am never leaving the ground again from now on. People
bring stuff to me. I I did my part, Like
I'm not going back over the ocean. You bring that
continent right there. I want to go to London, bring
London here. It was an absolutely amazing, amazing feat and
(38:07):
it does have its uh, it does have a lot
of importance. You might not necessarily believe that you might
think of it as simply some sort of stunt. Yeah,
but going beyond that, I mean, there are first of all,
this this kind of is a proof of concept of
something that NASA was talking about in the sixties when
they were thinking about if there were a problem with
(38:29):
a spacecraft, would it be possible for astronauts to space
dive back to Earth? Would it would there be any
way they could do that? Um? Or is that just
a you know, outside the realm of our our abilities?
And they theorized that it would be possible, but they
were they were never able to test it. Kittinger's jumps
(38:50):
were kind of related to that, and a lot of
the data that they collected during this jump there was
stuff that they could put toward developing more safety features
for astronauts as well as space tourists, because whoever thought
that would become a thing. But well, um and there
(39:12):
I saw some some people talking about the space Shuttle program,
and of course the the the two famous disasters. UM.
One of the people that has been working on this
is um the husband of one of the people who
perished in the Columbia accident. Um. They were too high
to have done something like this, they were moving they
(39:33):
were too far out from the planet when the the
accident happened, and and they were moving way too fast,
something like Mark seventeen. I think I remember, um reading
it was a Dr Jonathan Clark, who was a former
NASA flight surgeon. His wife, Laurel Um died in that accident.
So uh, you know, he was he was involved in
(39:53):
the process of of going through the safety procedures here. Um.
He's dedicated his life to working on safe, better safety
in space. And um uh you know, as far as
the Challenger incident, well, it's it's sort of unclear, um
whether they would have been able to get out or not. Um.
Of course, some of the the procedures they developed for
(40:17):
the Space Shuttle were after that as a result of
that accident. So um. But you know, in the future
or depending on on the different kinds of missions that
are undertaken, you know, either by NASSA or another government
space agency or by private enterprise. You know, I think
that this information could prove useful, um, you know, in
an emergency, or you know, perhaps it is a form
(40:40):
of space tourism. I don't know, well, And and and
just learning learning what the effects are these the things
that that that Felix experienced during this whole jump, I
mean everything from most breaking the sound barrier that no
one was really sure what would happen to a person,
and if to be fair, as of the recording of
(41:03):
this podcast, we cannot be certain that he did break
that barrier because the final numbers haven't come in. He
had a did you see how he would know if
he broke the sound barrier his so so he has
a chess plate or he had a chess plate on
his on a suit that contained a lot of different sensors, telemetry,
you know, information, GPS, all this kind of stuff. If
(41:27):
the sensors detected that the suit had exceeded the speed
of sound, it would send a ringtone to his helmet.
But he said he was concentrating so hard on what
was going on that he totally did not He didn't
notice anything. So it may have gone off or it
(41:47):
may not have gone off, and he would he doesn't
know because he was you know, at that point, I'm
kind of just really paying a trinch to what's going on,
especially once you know he came out of that spin.
So I'm flying here, Yeah, I got a lady I'm
flying here. Yeah, but yeah, there are there are a
lot of There are a lot of things that this
(42:08):
could help with, including designing new types of space suits
that are effective and are not as you know, we
can always make advances in that that realm. We don't
want it to be so clunky that you can't maneuver
around within the confines of a space vehicle. But it
still has to have the adequate levels of protection necessary
(42:31):
to make to maintain the health and safety of our astronauts.
So that's an important thing to to keep in mind too. Granted,
I don't think I don't think most of our space
suits will necessarily have a sponsor logos on them, but
they will. Um. I was disappointed that the the the
(42:52):
space suit didn't have wings. Well, it was interesting too
to uh to compare and you know, I'm going in
my head here looking at the the suits that they
wore in uh NASA launches from the nineteen sixties and seventies,
more so much bulkier um than this. Well, I mean
they were they were intended for different purposes, but I
(43:14):
imagine the equipment in this newer suit was far more
advanced than what kitten Ger wore. On his jumps and uh,
you know that with the technology advances, Uh, you know,
it's funny in a way, they resemble more what Hollywood
um suggests for you know, space fighter pilots than from
what the astronauts, the the actual astronauts from from our
(43:38):
own planet um or back in the days when that
was so common. I look forward to to the day
when we have space suits for space jumps that are
like the ones in the documentary Star Trek, not the
not the original motion picture Star Trek, but the the J. J.
Abrams documentary Star Trek. Yeah, the J. J Abrams documentary
(43:59):
Star Trek colon the lens flare caught me off. So, yeah,
do you have anything else you want to talk about? This?
This jump in particular, it was a really neat thing
to watch live and and Twitter was going bonkers as
this was happening. I saw so many people I know
(44:20):
tweeting about this, and um uh it just seemed like
there was an overall sense of excitement and and not
I was not the only terrified person on Earth watching this.
Um And you can watch the entire presentation as well.
It's it's up online so you can go and watch,
(44:40):
or you can watch segments of it if you don't have,
you know, two and a half hours to burn. But uh,
it's it's definitely something something amazing. It's one of those
moments in human achievement where you think, wow, it never
would have occurred to me that this is something that
anyone would want to do, and if they wanted to
do it, I can't eagine it being possible. And yet
(45:01):
both of those things happened. Yep, it was. It was
an amazing event. And uh, I'm glad it ended so well. Yes,
steps you're perfect, Yep, yep, it was so many different
things could have gone wrong. I'm glad of a lot
of really smart people worked on this to make sure
it went off without without any major glitches. So my
hat is off to you, and there we have our
(45:23):
classic tech stuff episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. It
was interesting to go back and look at this moment
in history, which I think a lot of people kind
of forget about now. Things changed so fast. We have
so many things dominating the news cycle that sometimes it
can be hard to remember these sort of pivotal, exciting
moments where the world was watching as someone did something
(45:46):
truly extraordinary, so it's fun to go back and look
at this. If you have suggestions for future episodes of
tech Stuff, you can reach out to me with the
email tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, where
you can pop on over to our website that's tech
Stuff podcast ask dot com that has an archive of
all of our past episodes. You can find links to
where we are on social media, and you can also
(46:06):
find a link to our online store, where every purchase
you make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it,
and I will talk to you again really soon. Ye
hext Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(46:28):
listen to your favorite shows.
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